Voting rights on docket for Supreme Court term

Pete Williams Justice correspondent • Profile

During the U.S. Supreme Court's new term beginning Monday, the justices will consider the fundamental issue of who is allowed to vote just in time for 2008's pivotal presidential elections.

The docket also includes a challenge to the Bush administration's war on terror, a question over the constitutionality of lethal injections and a test of a strict gun law, which could lead to a clarification of the Second Amendment.

The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to an Indiana law imposed two years ago that requires voters to show photo IDs at the polls. Steve Carter, the state's attorney general, said the law is important to prevent cheating.

"Voter fraud is a problem of disturbing prevalence around the country," he said.

But William Groth, a lawyer for the Indiana Democrats, contended that there has never been a reported case of attempted or successful in-person impersonation voting fraud in the state.

Critics have claimed the hidden purpose of the law is to suppress voting by minorities, the poor and the elderly — people who tend not to have photo IDs and are predominately Democrats.

Though Indiana's law is considered the nation's toughest, roughly half of the states in America require voters to produce some form of identification.

"If the Supreme Court upholds a law like this one, then this will get contagious, and 30 state legislatures around the country will pass something similar," said Chuck Todd, the NBC News political director.

Terror laws, gun rights among other cases
The Supreme Court docket contains a challenge to the Bush administration's war on terror.

Detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba seek the chance to oppose their detentions in federal court.

NBC video Big decisions mark new term Sept. 30: The Supreme Court Justices face important questions ranging from who can vote to the legal rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. NBC’s Pete Williams reports. Nightly News

Congress passed a law last year, called the Military Commissions Act of 2006, that blocked prisoners' access to the federal court system.

D.C. gun law challenged
Washington, D.C., has urged that the justices uphold the city's ban on handguns — one of the strictest gun laws in the nation. City officials said the restriction is essential to fighting crime.

"What we ban is a weapon that is uniquely dangerous, that is easily concealed and that is disproportionately used in crime," said Linda Singer, Attorney General for the District of Columbia.

In a surprising ruling, a federal appeals court earlier this year declared the ban a violation of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. The law was challenged by a Washington, D.C., resident who claimed the Constitution gives him a right to own a handgun for self-defense.

"I had a house broken into once, and things happen," said Rich Heller, the man who filed the lawsuit. "You want to protect yourself if you need to."

Though the Supreme Court discussed the Second Amendment in a 1939 gun case, the court has never definitively ruled on if the amendment protects an individual's right to own a gun or if it only protects a right of state militias to resist being disarmed by the national government.

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